When Good Plans Go Bad - You Had Better Have a Business Plan

(This is the first of a two, maybe three, maybe even four, part series on when good business plans go bad)

Having grown up in and around the business world, and having worked in the business world for the last seven years, I've always heard about how you can't run a business without a business plan.  You need a business plan.  Want a minuscule bank loan?  You need a business plan.  Want to speak with anyone that has earned their MBA in the last 10 years?  You had better have a business plan.  Want Venture Capital money?  You had better have a business plan. Want to mention Venture Capital in a completely unrelated blog post?  You had better have a business plan.  I think you catch my drift.  You NEED a business plan.

Well, I'm here to tell you that bGreen has a business plan.  Actually, we have several drafts of business plans that when you put them together probably make one full business plan.  To be quite honest, I'm really pleased that we don't have a single complete business plan.  After all, once the ink dries on your business plan, the first thing anyone will tell you is that it's become obsolete.  Let me begin to share with you why the sum of our parts might actually be greater than the whole.

When bGreen was just an idea, before bGreen was even called bGreen, we had an idea to try and bring green to Boston.  The products were already in our lives, but they just weren't right there and readily accessible.  Want a KleenKanteen?  Search around.  There are knock-offs all around, but the real thing is hard to find.  Want BioBags?  Good luck finding them.  Try some sketchy shop that sells via uBid.com.  You just couldn't get the stuff.  So we said to ourselves, let's put together a store and sell this stuff.  So began bGreen Business Plan Version 1.0.

So, after a couple months of planning, a meeting on Cape Cod, 5,000 miles on a plane to and from LA, countless trade shows, conventions, networking events, product research, location scouting, more planning, and endless hours of "borrowed" wifi, we had a pretty good idea of what bGreen was going to look like.  So we started to put together our business plan.  We had a killer outline.  Just the right amount of green industry overview, marketing info, product info, executive summaries, etc etc.  When we came to the finance section of the business plan, this is where Version 1.0 became Version 1.Not Happening.  Here's what spooked us:

• Monthly overhead (rent, taxes, insurance, utilities) in a killer location = $10,000 minimum


• Average Profit margin = 50%


• Monthly sales to cover overhead in said killer location = $30,000 minimum

Do you have any idea how many water bottles and biodegradable trash bags you need to sell to cover your overhead?  The number is astonishing. It's something like 1,500 water bottles per month.  50 a day!

Adios Business Plan Version 1.0.  Our business plan beauty that was the compilation of all of our efforts for the past few months now just became filler for the recycle bin. Maybe we were foolish to attack the finance section last.  Maybe.  Hell, you can't run a business on dreams and concept alone.  But I honestly think that we benefited by ignoring the finance section, and simply coming up with a great concept, product, and vision first.  The numbers will come together eventually.  Anyone want to buy some water bottles?

Stay tuned for Part 2, titled "When Good Plans Go Bad - Don't call 1-800-Got-Junk Just Yet"